


A Sliver of Truth

by iloveyoudie



Category: Endeavour (TV)
Genre: Aggression, Box Lives, Death Wish, Explicit Language, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Heavy Angst, Knives, M/M, Mild Blood, Post-Season/Series 06, Rough Sex, Self-Hatred, Self-Loathing, Threats, mild violence, references to canon character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-15
Updated: 2020-08-15
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:14:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25918654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iloveyoudie/pseuds/iloveyoudie
Summary: Ronnie Box wished he was dead.From the moment he opened his eyes, nearly immobile and poked full of holes and wound with tubes in a hospital bed, not knowing where he was or what was going on, floating on cloud of the good stuff they’d pumped him full of to keep him under while he healed.His first real, solid, conscious thought was'Fuck. I wish I was dead.'
Relationships: Ronnie Box/Alan Jago, Ronnie Box/Alan Jago/Mrs. Jago (OFC), Ronnie Box/Mrs. Jago (OFC)
Comments: 10
Kudos: 32





	A Sliver of Truth

**Author's Note:**

  * For [guardianoffun](https://archiveofourown.org/users/guardianoffun/gifts).



Ronnie Box wished he was dead.

From the moment he opened his eyes, nearly immobile and poked full of holes and wound with tubes in a hospital bed, not knowing where he was or what was going on, floating on cloud of the good stuff they’d pumped him full of to keep him under while he healed.

His first real, solid, conscious thought is ' _Fuck. I wish I was dead._ '

He can’t feel most of his body for ages, phasing in and out of real solid lucidity, but he gains slow awareness of where he is and why. He can see the blurry shape of a uniformed officer sitting in a chair by the door and he soon remembers everything, because there's nothing wrong with his mind besides the fog of a painkiller cocktail, and because forgetting would have been too fucking easy. Too clean and perfect. But right then he can't be arsed to care what he'd done or why, not with enough shit running through him to knock out a horse.

He can't be arsed to care when a doctor comes to explain to him how lucky he is to be alive, either. The bloke’s got a list of organs that were nearly ruined. The things the bullet popped a hole in. How he could have been paralyzed if it had been an inch sideways or how he could have bled out if not for those at the scene being quick to attention. He sounds rather triumphant that Box is alive. But Ronnie wants to throttle him, would’ve told him whats what, would have put him through a wall if he could have.

Fred Thursday shows up that first week to visit him and brings some food from his missus that the nurses won’t let him have. He imagines Mrs. Thursday’s as decent as her husband, the type who thinks he saved his life, some grand forgiveness for whatever crooked path he’d led him on in the first place. Ronnie figures Fred is back on top after the rest of them have fallen. He can't fault him that though, that’s what it had been all along hadn’t it? Getting what was deserved, reaping the rewards of what was coming to you. He liked Fred, he really did. Ronnie felt they understood one another despite it all. But Fred, in the end, was a man who cared deeply about what was right and what was wrong and Ronnie, he only cared about himself. So maybe it did turn out right.

His rewards had been reaped.

Ronnie Box wished he was dead, because now he has to look Fred bloody Thursday in the eye and hear how he’d done a decent thing. How if he plays his cards right, and they get a few good words in for him, Ronnie may not even end up in jail.

He hadn’t even thought about that.

He saved Fred’s life, he’s reminded, “And Morse.” Fred says a moment later, “And that’s no small thing.”

But he didn’t save their lives. Not for them anyway. He’d done it for himself. Because once he realized how bloody stupid and blind he’d been, how he’d been lied to, he had to make himself a presence. Had to make it about him. Had to show Jago he wasn’t as soft as he thought. He thought he couldn’t bear any more blood on copper hands, but really what he meant were his own. His own conscience. To know what would happen and not do anything-

But now he wished he’d bloody well died. Wished Jago had seen him and laughed and put a bullet between his eyes. That would have just been the topper on the cake of Jago’s betrayal and Box would have been in the ground by now.

Because said and done, he was alive, and all Ronnie Box can think about is that he'd killed his partner. His friend.

And he wished he'd gone with him.

* * *

It’s Fred who takes him to Jago’s grave.

It’s clear that Fred’s keen on them being friends, and he’s not entirely against it. He can see now the similarities he refused to see before, between Fred and his City Boys, that dogged determination. One sliver of truth and he’d pursue it to the end of the earth. But the world has turned off kilter for Ronnie and he isn’t the man he’d been before. He isn’t even sure he knows the man who jumped in front of Alan’s gun, and even if he could muster the energy for DCI Ronnie Box, Fred would never see him that way ever again.

He’d shown too much. A sliver of truth.

It’s overcast when they get to the cemetery and Ronnie finds he cant get out of the car. He can still see the headstone though, it’s not even seen a rainy season yet and looks brand new. The engraving still bright near-white and stark and obvious from this distance.

 _Alan Jago  
_ _Beloved Husband_

A taxi pulls up behind Fred’s car, that same old busted Jaguar he and Morse refuse to let go of, and Ronnie watches through a wing mirror as the widow appears, like a banshee or a spectre, some omen. A fatefully ill-timed twinge of punishment.

And he swears she glances towards the car and sees him. He can feel it in his wound somehow. Those dark eyes, deep brown, he knows them well. Too well. Something inside his gut stabs sharply. And then she turns her head away and walks, iron straight, across the grass to visit her husband.

* * *

They’d all been friends once. When Jago and he had partnered up they’d taken to one another immediately. Both quick with a joke, a laugh, up on sport and gossip, same taste in dark haired women with good hips and the occasional tug in the showers with a solid and discreet bloke. Alan had invited him round for dinner almost immediately, introduced him to his wife, winked and told him to watch himself because this one was his, and Ronnie had just grinned.

“Nice ta meet you, Mrs. Jago.”

She laughed and tossed her thick hips towards her husband as he curled an arm possessively around her, “Please, call me Jane.”

“Janey Jago,” He laughed.

“Oi,” Alan pointed at him with a joking severity, “It’s got a ring to it.”

“So it does,” Ronnie had winked at her, “Call me Ronnie then, Jane.”

Soon after Alan had introduced him to McGyffin and the rest, and even though Ronnie was nervous, paranoid in the beginning, Alan was the one who reminded him how trivial it all was. How he deserved a little more from the job.

“After what happened to yer dad?” He’d clapped a hand on his shoulder, “It’s only what ya meant to have, mate.”

And it got easier.

They’d have dinner every week after that. They were real mates and Jane wasn’t just some bloke’s wife. She was a friend too. They were a duo. A pair. He started not being able to think of them outside of work at all without thinking of the both of them.

They’d been trying to have kids.

She was in on the money. Not the details. Just the money. She didn’t seem to want to know too much, at least not when Ronnie had been in their company, but she certainly understood. Jane was smarter than him, most likely smarter than Alan too, but Ronnie Box was thick. He was a twit. Dim. Jane had _chosen_ not to know too much but Ron had simply been too stupid to see what was staring him in the face.

Jane and Alan had trust and communication with one another and they were open and welcoming to him. Giving. They had given him more than most would and it was certainly an attractive package. They were the kind of people that got Ronnie thinking, maybe, if he found himself a nice little girl of his own, he could settle down to be like. Couple friends. All four of them. Houses within walking distance. Kids who were friends.

Stupid shit.

They had never made him feel like a third wheel. He was never the odd man out. And sometimes they’d all get a bit drunk and Jago would get that intense look in his eye and Janey would get that smile of hers, and Alan’s fingers would slide over his back as he passed by, and Janey’s red nails would enticingly glide along the door frame as they disappeared into the bedroom. And they were all on the same wavelength. Alan was just his kind of bloke and Janey was the kind of woman they both needed, wanted.

They were a very attractive package, so he goes to bed with them.

* * *

He wasn’t sure why or when he’d started to save the money. After he’d settled a few tabs, cleaned his place up a bit, after Alan started having to do more on his own and left Ronnie, clueless, to be the face around the office. He was bigger and louder, more handsome, smoother and demanding. Ronnie was the face man and Alan was the brains. He didn’t mind it, but it started to take an edge that he sensed more than he saw.

Maybe he’d realized, in the undercurrent of everything, that there really was no one to trust. It was unspoken but he felt it. It was before Fred and Morse became an issue but they certainly hadn’t helped. Then there were murders and drugs and Ronnie clung as best he could to what he knew, his position, his role there, knowing nothing nearly and maybe - he thinks later - he was safer not knowing.

Turns out Fred was good on his word in the end. Ronnie isn’t tossed into a hole for the rest of his life. He’s back in his flat and he’s working some uncomplicated job. He fixes cars, keeps his head down, goes to the pub, laughs with the blokes, but he doesn’t get close. Doesn’t try. And one day he goes to fetch his money, his stash, because the cops never thought to pursue it when he said he’d spent every cent. Dumb fuck Ronnie Box wouldn’t save. Maybe it was his face. His style. Big idiot who’s all flash and impulse and no substance. Cars and jewelry and clothes and a big flat.

But he only drove work cars. He only owned one watch and one bracelet and one chain. His only scent was aftershave and his flat was paid for. Inherited. Box didn’t like to spend money. He hoarded it obsessively. Like how he cleaned. Like how he kept himself. When you grew up with little you went two ways in his experience… you spent it all as soon as you got it or you never ever spent it in fear that you’d never get it again.

He won’t even spend this cash. He’ll take a little bit when needed, hide it again, and wonder maybe if he ought to do more.

* * *

He shows up at her door a few months after the cemetery. Alan and Jane had just bought a house and the Jago’s were nothing if not capable of covering their tracks on the home front. Whatever he’d done at work, Alan had made sure his wife was safe and secure and taken care of.

At least it seemed so.

When she answers the door, dressed in widow’s black, Ronnie can still see unopened boxes packed in the hall, tucked in by the stairs, the walls undecorated. It’s furnished, wired, and lit, it’s an operational shell, an attractive package, with a gutted inside.

And her eyes are cold.

She lets him in and takes him to the kitchen with almost no words. She looks like she should have some sort of sweeping veil on, like she should be weeping into a hanky at a graveside, not like the woman he’d grown to know and care for. And Ronnie finds he doesn’t know what to say.

The kitchen seems to have gotten more attention than the rest of the house. Theres a healthy drinks cabinet and she pulls out something she knows he likes. She pulls out what they’d drink on those night’s they’d all spend together. Vodka. Tequila. It didn’t matter. Despite the grief and anger that hangs on every inch of her, drips over and off of her, her hands don’t tremble when she pours him a glass and hands it over.

Her nails are still cherry red. Her lips just as crimson. She sips and says nothing, dark eyes boring into him, and he remembers drinking it from her lips as she straddled his lap, remembers Alan tilting his chin back from behind to plunder his mouth for his own taste. He remembers Janey laughing at them, booze dribbling down her lips and chin and collarbone. Ronnie can almost remember the taste of Alan’s tongue as he takes his drink now, the cigarettes and booze, the scratch of his beard and smell of his cologne.

She asks why hes there.

He says to see how she is. To talk.

“How am I? My husbands dead. I’ve got this big empty house,” Her lips curl in something so despairing it’s near anger, “You see those boxes - still packed.”

He looks, of course he does, because he’s nothing if not someone easily led, and when he turns back he feels her close. She's pressed against him but its not warm even though he smells her perfume and the clean crisp smell of the laundering on her clothing. Her thick hips again his own, the swell of her chest on his, it isn’t affectionate and yet it still stirs him, even as he feels something sharp under the bottom of his chin.

The smell of booze is next, more than the drink she’d sipped. She’s permeated in it. Booze and tears, like the smell of rain.

And she presses the knife tip upwards, lets the tip lift his chin and break the skin, and there’s a shake in her voice, “You killed my husband Ronnie. You got balls showing up here.”

And then she grabs him, her free hand clamping onto his groin, complete and surprising and she squeezes.

It’s all he can do not to yelp.

But he did kill her husband and this seems fitting payback.

Yes.

He wouldn’t be sussed if she pushed that blade straight up through the soft under his chin. Would she run or stay? At least she’d get her revenge and he - he wouldn’t have to suffer this anymore - this awareness of his own weakness. His own cowardice. The thing that kept him up at night. That had him jumping at loud noises. Those shivering flare ups of paranoia and uncertainty, shakes and sweats that came at night, left afraid to leave his flat. He’d never had panic attacks before and the only management he’d learned so far was how to cover it up when it came to going out to work.

“He always told me you were just a tad too decent. You were a bastard, yea, arrogant. The pair of you were peacocks, weren’t you? Peas in a pod. But Alan knew. He said he wasn’t sure if you would stay the course. Didn’t think you could stomach the real truth of things,” Jane’s laugh comes out ugly, “Turns out you did have the nerve to kill though, didn’t you?”

She dragged the knife tip down his throat, not breaking skin anymore, but he felt a wet drop of blood gather under his chin and drip to disappear into the inky black of his own shirt.

“I should kill you,” She sounds venomous, but something cracks and wobbles, and now that Ronnie can tilt his head down he sees the pulse pounding hard under the faintly freckled skin of her throat.

Both of them were freckled. Joked they’d have a cheetah for a kid. Alan said ‘A giraffe’ and Janey had bubbled with laughter and informed her husband that height wasn’t his strong point.

Jane’s hand splayed across his chest, the knife now pressed over his heart, but she sagged a moment and her forehead rested against his jaw.

Ronnie closes his eyes. Inhales the smell of her hair. It smells the same. The same as when it tumbled free down her back, across her face, as she and Alan pressed him back into the mattress and kissed one another above him. He swears he might smell Alan too, a whiff of him. A phantom. A memory.

Ronnie’s arm slid around her waist and she stiffens again. He feels the prick of the knife tip again, biting sharp into his pectoral.

“Go on then,” He’s amazed his own voice doesn’t break or crack. He must have been more sure of this than he realised. He pulls her in, pulls her tighter into him, and the knife presses imperceptibly harder, “Couldn’t blame you if you did.”

Would Morse show up to investigate his brutal murder? Smug to see him meet his end, smarmy, with that queer little doctor picking him apart like a specimen? Morse could swoon over his blood. Pick out stupid clues and say phrases like ‘crime of passion’ when he could be chasing her.

Box was already rooting for her. Yes, she should kill him. Take to the road, disappear, take the money and run. It would be what he deserved. And what she did, after all she’d been through.

It always came back to that. What they all deserved.

Ronnie waits for the final blow but Jane’s fingers crawl over his chest and up to his jaw and she tilts his head down until he opens his eyes to look at her. She looks like she may cry, but there’s no tears, just red rims of exhaustion and dark eyeliner, and she surges up to kiss him. Her knife drags down and tears through his shirt and skims his skin with a shallow line of bloody cut, before it catches in the fabric and tumbles from her hand loosely to clatter to the floor.

They surge into one another, devour each other, and he knows he shouldn’t but he can’t turn her away. Her crimson nails claw the front of him, tear his shirt more, scratch over the shallow cut that beads with blood, over his skin, over the weak pink still healing wound where Alan had shot him. She grips him there on his waist, presses her thumb against the tender flesh, and he feels the deep ache of it, and she holds there as he finally lets out a grunt of pain. It was like hearing the sound validates something for her and Jane gathers some of her steel and pushes him against a wall.

He takes it, steps back til his arse hits a solid surface and when she’s back on him his hands shift into her hair and tangle. He tugs until she bends back and makes a sound of satisfaction deep in her bared throat. He finds the skin with his mouth. He tastes her, so similar to a dozen other times, his lips and teeth and tongue on her neck, the flutter of her pulse under his mouth and she leans back for more and more and more in his grip until he’s nearly into the sinful dip of her unbuttoned blouse.

Ronnie pushes her back then, releases her waist and she nearly stumbles. There’s a flare of anger in her eyes and he realizes that’s what he wants. He wants to know she’s angry at him. So he surges forward, summons his own burning aggression, feels it come bubbling up, even if it’s at himself and not at her, and she she comes for him nails first once more. They crash together violently and Ronnie scoops her up under the arse, lets her arms and legs close around him as he puts her up on the counter edge, and she arches her back again as he tears her blouse open and drops his head to her chest.

Her scent is now overwhelming, intoxicating, booze and beauty, anger and lust, and he finds a pebbled nipple to clamp his mouth on once a lacy bit of bra pushes down, and she wrenches him back by his hair, his mouth tearing off of her, and there’s a flash of something in her eyes.

She slaps him.

It stings, he can feel the flesh swell into a hand print on his cheek and her voice breaks again as she croaks a near sob, “ _I hate you, Ronnie Box_.”

Jane’s limbs unwind from him and she shoves him away from her. She drops to her feet from the counter top and her shoes are kicked off to thunk dully into the front of the refrigerator. She pushes him with both hands and once more Ronnie accepts it, lets himself be pushed back until he hits a different counter, and once he’s nowhere else to go she’s on him again. Jane claws at his belt, rips it loose, throws it, her nails scratch over his cock through his trousers until she’s got the fly open, and shes thrusts a hand down his shorts to wrap around him.

Box lets out a low sound. The last time he’s been touched like this by another person it may very well have been her. Or Alan. Even now it’s like he’s hovering on the outskirts, watching, grinning, egging them on, and it sends a chill down Ronnie’s spine.

Jane seems to feel there’s something wrong, the hiccup in his eager response, so she pulls out her hand and spits in it, before she shoves it down to stroke him again.

“Fuck,” Ronnie’s eyes close and he focuses on the feeling instead of the looming reality.

And Jane stops as soon as he’s hard, gets him thick and needy, and lets him go, leaves him hanging out of his trousers and wipes her hand on a towel and turns around.

He’s not that much of an idiot. Ronnie gravitates toward her, wraps an arm around her waist as she grinds her arse against him. She guides his hand down her belly, to the snug dip of her thighs hidden under the fabric of her skit and further, until he can grip the hem and hike it up. His fingers scrape lightly across her nylons, he can feel and hear the sound of it, until she impatiently pushes his hand across her knickers so he knows she’s damp already, and she sighs and rolls her hips against his fingers.

“Biggest hands I’ve ever seen,” She’d murmured once into Alan’s ear while perched on his lap, after drinks and a light dinner, and hours of talking. She always liked to keep her ‘secrets’ loud enough for Ronnie to hear, “We should put them to work.”

Ronnie pushes fabric aside and slides his fingers over the heat of her, through the silky folds of her body until he can curl them up inside, deep and slow until she’s rocking into the ball of his hand and he's gripping and covering the whole of her.

“Fuck me you prick,” she hisses after she’s breathy. Her skirt's come up high enough for him to feel his cock bumping against the nylons and bunched fabric of her underclothes. It nestles against her arse, cradles between her thighs, in the seam of her body in a way that was so inviting he couldn’t refuse.

He should have. She should have killed him. But she wanted this instead. They both wanted it, but maybe she _needed_ it.

“Go on, you coward,” her voice cracks again but rises in a whine as he curls his fingers inside of her again, fucks her on his hand with a small measure of force until shes so wet he can hear it, and he withdraws and feet settle back flat and her hips lower with a shiver.

Ronnie’s hands drag over her nylons, black and silky and smooth, and he digs his blunt fingers in and tears them. He sinks his hands in at her thigh, pulls until they pop and break, until bits of her milky skin bloom soft through the shredded hole. He tears again, pushes her to bend at the waist so he can grip her arse cheek, watches the sheer give way under his thumb, another swell of porcelain flesh, watches her look back at him and flush and pant and push her hips back into him. He tugs one more time until they finally rip away to bare her shifted knickers and her glistening cunt and there’s not a single hesitation or even a moment to enjoy the view before he’s pushing inside of her.

She moans aloud with the first thrust, lifting on her toes, and when he withdraws his hips the first time she pulls away only enough to move and brace herself against a surface. She spread her legs, and he follows, lines up behind her again, grips his hands to dig into her thick hips, and shreds more of her stockings. He watches the black sheer give way again under his violence and he thrusts into her again.

It doesn’t take long, not with the heightened emotions, the insistence, the need and greed. Anger. Pain. He fucks her until she’s gasping, keening, cursing, until she’s was slipping her fingers down over herself, rubbing with those rouged nails, scissoring her fingers around his entrance of her, feeling the place their bodies came together, until she was sobbing in time with her own body's clenching pleasure, until Box was folding over her back and bruising her pale skin under his hold on her, and thrusting out his end in shallow trembling and wordless grunts. She’s tight on him, crying real tears finally, as she rubs herself to orgasm and he pulls out to spill against her arse in a heady mind blanking explosion.

They both shiver and tremble together in silence. There's no boneless embrace, no cheeky breathy laughter like there used to be, no Alan there pulling them in against him because he liked a good cuddle. There's nothing but their breathing and shifting fabric and the cool unremarkable chill of the echoing kitchen tile around them. The first real movement was Jane pushing him away with spread fingers, closing her legs and straightening. She wriggles out of her knickers and uses them to clean herself before she shimmies her skirt back down in some illusion of respectability. Her shredded nylons are also removed and both they and her panties end up in the bin as Ron zips up and fetches his belt. By the time he’s done she’s got her back to him. He can see his own pink scratches along her thighs, between her knees, that she’s got blood under her nails as she hugs her arms to herself and grips her own elbows.

She trembles in place and even though he can’t see her face, can’t see where her eyeliner has streaked from her tears, the tears that only came when he fucked her, but he knows these sobs are dry again. She moves to the drinks cabinet, still facing away from him, and she trembles still as she grabs and unscrews a bottle.

“Do you need money?” Ronnie, fucking idiot he is, says this first. He realizes that’s why he’s come. He’d been saving. He can help her set up somewhere else if she wants. Get her out of Oxford.

Not _for her_. Never for someone else. Only for him.

He couldn’t bear to see her on the street. To run into her again.

And he knew he was going nowhere.

“I’m not your whore, Ronnie Box!” She roars, the bottle is nearly thrown before she catches herself, and Jane hisses deep, “You’re mine."

Her snap had been a shock and he’s sure he looks as terrified as he suddenly feels. The edges of the panic are back, static in his ears, prickling in his chest, an oppressive and anxious weight on his heart.

Jane hisses and puts the bottle back down on the counter. She leans on the surface heavily with both palms, “Keep your fucking money.”

Ron isn’t sure what to do. What to say. He looks down at himself, sliced to shit, ripped clothing, something humiliating drying on the front of his trousers and he feels deep in his gut how pathetic of a human being he is. The sliver of truth, the lameness of his existence, sinking in again.

“Get out of my house,” she growls, shoulders trembling, and Ronnie hears her tears held back again. She wouldn’t let him see that again. He didn’t deserve to.

Her husband was dead.  
He killed him.  
It should have been him.

“Get out!” She bellows again, an explosion of sound from somewhere inside of her that he couldn’t touch.

And he does.

He leaves and he knows he’ll never go back.

**Author's Note:**

> this is a many months old wip that @guardianoffun inspired me to finish last night.  
> please get on the ronnie box self-loathing train with me. also the exploration of jago and box's partnership. so many opportunities.
> 
> not my most thoroughly or consciously edited but i enjoyed the stream of consciousness feel of it so I didn't get too strict.


End file.
